SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
trump supporters
Could the Left Actually Win Back 'Trump Country' in West Virginia?
Oct 08, 2023
I spoke with Troy Miller, executive producer of the Zero Hour, in his capacity as a member of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia Democratic Party. We discussed the party’s recent adoption of an updated version of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.
Could it revive their political fortunes? Here’s a clue, from something I wrote several years ago and never published. It concerns McDowell County, WV, the state’s poorest county, which I researched as Bernie Sander’s speechwriter for a speech he gave there in 2016.
Troy N. Miller: WV Democrats Adopt 21st c. Economic Bill of Rights!youtu.be
The Invisibles: McDowell County, WV
Coastal journalists view rural people as an alien species – that is, when they think of them at all. When they cover them they sound like amateur entomologists pondering the consciousness of bugs under glass. Snake-handling features prominently in their coverage, even though it’s only practiced in a tiny handful of mostly informal churches.
According to the media narrative, in 2016 the reptile-loving hillbillies of journalistic imagination embraced another cold-blooded creature: Donald Trump. A typical post-election photo essay on McDowell County was headlined, “This County Gives a Glimpse at the America That Voted Trump Into Office.”[1]
Step right up, city folks! See the strange creatures with whom you share a nation!
The county’s voting results fed the media’s perennial appetite for exoticizing rural people. And yet, despite coverage like “Why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Donald Trump,”[2] the picture wasn’t nearly as clear as their coverage would have it. For one thing, McDowell County’s population was 8.2 percent Black, which isn’t all that different from the national average of 12.4 percent. And yet, Black people rarely figured in their condescending, Beverly Hillbillies-themed narrative.
They got the politics wrong, too. Here’s how McDowell County voted in the 2016 primaries:
- Donald Trump: 785
- Hillary Clinton: 817
- Bernie Sanders: 1,488
That’s right: the democratic socialist got more votes than Trump or Clinton by a factor of nearly two to one.
The general election results were as follows:
- Hillary Clinton: 1,438 (less than Sanders received in the primary)
- Donald Trump: 4,629
- Decline to participate: 11,433
That’s a decisive victory -- for political alienation. The non-participation rate was much higher than that of the country as a whole. Only 34.7 percent of eligible voters voted in McDowell’s general election, versus 56.9 percent nationwide.
“Trump country”? Nationally, 27 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump. In McDowell, that percentage was a slightly lower (if statistically insignificant) 26.45 percent.
Yes, Trump won decisively in McDowell among those who voted. But McDowell County isn’t “Trump country.” It’s “None of the Above” country.
And yet, despite the fact that Donald Trump only won the votes of about one in four voters, the county’s residents soon became the poster children for right-wing “deplorability.”
The media’s challenges didn’t begin in 2016. “Penetrating a closed, isolated society in Appalachia,” read a 2014 inside-the-news headline from the New York Times.[3] But “closed” and “isolated” from whom? Certainly not each other. A story in the Chattanooga (TN) Times Free Press emphasizes a local initiative built on community values:
“McDowell County needed to return to the message its churches preached, locals said. Maybe it was as simple as embracing the Golden Rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The charitable side of McDowell County never seems to make the national press.
Trump screwed them afterwards, of course. Things kept getting worse: drug and alcohol deaths, suicides, rampaging addiction, and a shortage of jobs. The McDowell County Commission sued three drug companies for their role in the opioid epidemic, although few people thought anything would come of it. Nothing did — but at least they tried.
Why the poorest county in West Virginia has faith in Donald Trump | Anywhere but Washingtonyoutu.be
McDowell County, like the country overall, is divided. But the mainstream media prefers to see a one-dimensional caricature of the county and the state. It’s true that they don’t like elitists, which is how a lot of Democrats come across to them. But they apparently like somebody who stands up to powerful interests and doesn’t talk down to them.
Anything seems like Hail Mary for West Virginia’s Democrats right now, but the Economic Bill of Rights it’s clear, easy to explain, and is opposed by the kinds of people who are despised by everyone from left to right: billionaires and corporations.
It’s definitely worth a shot, and the results will be worth watching.
Keep ReadingShow Less
One Ugly Summer: Is Latest Trump Rally Violence Just Taste of What's to Come?
Rancor, riot police, anger, and arrests. Will 2016 be the year political events become violent by design?
Apr 29, 2016
One ugly summer.
If events in California outside a Donald Trump rally on Thursday night are any indication, the months ahead are likely to inspire more acrimony than political inspiration as billionaire media personality Donald Trump emerges as the Republican Party's presidential nominee.
While holding an event at the Orange County Fair grounds in the city of Costa Mesa, approximately twenty people were arrested after anti-Trump demonstrators clashed with the candidate's supporters and police were confronted with a hostile crowd who vowed to challenge the noxious views of Trump's campaign.
As the Guardianreports:
Outside the venue, a crowd of largely Latino but also white and African American demonstrators shouted and chanted slogans before the event, then returned as it drew to a close.
Hundreds of people formed human barricades on an approach road to a nearby freeway, blocked the Fairgrounds exits, and waved banners that said "Build a Wall Around Trump" and "Dump the Trump".
Police appeared to be caught out by the protesters and had to call in reinforcements to separate them from the Trump supporters flooding into a large parking lot after the rally.
"Whose streets? Our streets!" the demonstrators chanted as hundreds of police officers, many in riot gear, ordered them to disperse. While most remained peaceful and waved immigrants' rights banners, several of them jumped on a police patrol car parked at one corner of the Fairgrounds, smashed its windows and attempted to tip it over.
"I'm protesting because I want equal rights for everybody, and I want peaceful protest," one demonstrator, 19-year-old Daniel Lujan, told the Los Angeles Times. "I knew this was going to happen," he added. "It was going to be a riot. He deserves what he gets."
Reporters and witnesses tweeted images and video from the scene:
\u201cBack window has been smashed out of a Costa Mesa police cruiser. Protester: "I think Donald Trump did it!"\u201d— Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85 (@Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85) 1461903556
\u201cA @realDonaldTrump supporter just got punched in the face as a scuffle broke out in the street:\u201d— Jeremy Diamond (@Jeremy Diamond) 1461905288
\u201chttps://t.co/msfXtWoMTi\u201d— Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85 (@Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85) 1461904025
\u201c# Trump protesters take over intersection near fairgrounds\u201d— Gina Ferazzi (@Gina Ferazzi) 1461900421
\u201cPeople jumping on police car outside @realDonaldTrump rally. Window smashed few minutes earlier\u201d— Jeremy Diamond (@Jeremy Diamond) 1461903932
\u201cMore pictures from the chaotic scene outside the @realDonaldTrump rally tonight: https://t.co/b1VDAQi12a\u201d— Jeremy Diamond (@Jeremy Diamond) 1461913962
\u201cArianna Perez, 19, with the sign: "We could be peaceful & do things different, but we wouldn't get our voice heard."\u201d— Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85 (@Matt Pearce \ud83e\udd85) 1461904676
Though local law enforcement had invited neighboring agencies to assist them and established an emergency operations center to monitor and control the crowds, the Times reports, "it was apparent to some that the sizable police presence was wrestling with a larger crowd than expected."
Megan Iyall, an out-of-towner who attended the rally, told the newspaper, "It definitely got out of control. I shouldn't feel this unsafe."
Though nothing is certain yet, each passing primary contest shows Trump closing in on securing his party's nomination. As a Trump nomination has steadily evolved from vague possibility to reality, numerous critics have warned about the sinister fascist undertones (as well as the overt xenophobia, nationalism, sexism, and racism) of his personality and those who support him.
For his part, the candidate appeared pleased with the evening, tweeting:
\u201cThank you Costa Mesa, California! 31,000 people tonight with thousands turned away. I will be back! #Trump2016\u201d— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1461903849
Keep ReadingShow Less
War, Peace, and Bernie Sanders
Mar 03, 2016
It's the day after the big vote, and I'm doing my best to dig Tulsi Gabbard's endorsement of Bernie Sanders out from beneath the pile of Super Tuesday numbers and media declarations of winners and losers.
As a Boston Globe headline said: "Clinton and Trump are now the presumptive nominees. Get used to it."
However, something besides winning and losing still matters more than ever in the 2016 presidential race. War, peace, and fundamental questions about who we are as a nation are on the line in this race—or could be—for the first time since 1972 when George McGovern was the Democratic presidential nominee.
Embrace what matters profoundly, and there's no such thing as losing.
Gabbard, an Iraq war vet, the congresswoman from Hawaii, and "rising star" in the Democratic establishment, stepped down as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Sanders -- because he's the only candidate who is not financially and psychologically tied to the military-industrial complex.
"As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know firsthand the cost of war," she said, cracking the mainstream silence on U.S. militarism. "As a vice chair of the DNC, I must stay neutral in democratic primaries, but I cannot remain neutral any longer. The stakes are just too high."
Because of Gabbard -- only because of Gabbard -- the multi-trillion-dollar monstrosity of U.S. militarism is getting a little mainstream media attention amid the reality TV histrionics of this year's presidential race, the Donald Trump phenomenon and the spectacle of Republican insult-flinging.
As the results of Super Tuesday started coming in on Tuesday night, Gabbard was given a few minutes to talk on MSNBC. While Rachel Maddow wanted to discuss the risk her Sanders endorsement might have on her career, Gabbard insisted on addressing the slightly larger matter of our unchecked, resource-hemorrhaging military adventurism across the globe.
"War is a very real thing," she said. "If the Syrian war continues, we won't have the resources to fund important social programs. This isn't a question of the past -- it's a question of today. Regime-change wars do nothing to strengthen our national security, but they do strengthen our enemies."
Fine. We'll return after these messages . . .
The MSNBC analysts' attention returned to the Trump phenomenon a short while later. Someone opined: "The vast majority of Trump supporters are enamored of winning"far more than they care about the goofball issues Trump is supposedly running on, like the wall across the Mexican border and the ban on Muslims entering the country.
Maybe it's true, but I sense the mainstream media is a lot more comfortable with an issue-free presidential race, which is what the powers that be want. The presidential election is supposed to be a distraction, not some public accountability process.
While the Sanders phenomenon is as shocking and unexpected as the success of the Trump campaign, it is far too substantive to garner a similar amount of media attention, let alone seriously considering the issues he raises. Yet remarkably, his call for social change—for the transformation of a "rigged economy"—has not receded to the margins, either.
So what happens next? Tulsi Gabbard's endorsement is the key. As Dave Lindorff recently wrote:
"Sanders, who has been avoiding talking about the country's military budget and its imperialist foreign policy, should use the opportunity of Gabbard's defection from the DNC to announce that if elected, he would immediately slash military spending by 25 percent, he would begin pulling U.S. forces back from most of the 800 or more bases they occupy around the world, and that he would end a decades-long foreign policy of overthrowing elected leaders around the globe."
The shock waves generated by such a stance from a candidate with 386 delegates would be enormous. Conventional wisdom cries no, no, that's too much. No matter how much harm our wars have caused in the last decade, no matter how absurd a slice that war preparation -- including nuclear weapons development -- gouges from the national budget, the U.S. military, the planet's biggest polluter and most prolific terrorist, remains untouchable. The public has no say in these matters. The president has no say in these matters.
This delusion goes back to the Vietnam War and McGovern's loss to Richard Nixon. Since then, the Democrats have attempted to purge themselves of antiwar -- or what perhaps should be called trans-military -- thinking. In doing so, they've tied themselves to their own, and the country's, inevitable collapse.
The other option is transformation. This is the year it could begin.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular